Free Republic

President Biden is signing an executive order on Monday intended to cut back on the bureaucracy around government services for the public such as renewing their passports, applying for loans or changing their name. The order, which Biden will sign on Monday afternoon on camera, affects 36 "customer experience improvement commitments" across 17 federal agencies. The order targets various government services dealing with travel, retirement, business, health and updating personal information, according to a White House fact sheet. For example, the order will call for a streamlined enrollment experience for retirees looking to enroll in Social Security, and it will...

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about California’s economy? If it’s the high unemployment numbers or the budget deficits in Sacramento, you are not alone. But it’s also true that California, in spite of its problems, remains one of the ten biggest economies in the world and America’s leader in categories like industrial research and development and attracting foreign direct investment. California cannot allow the past few years of recession to threaten our state’s economic standing on the world stage. We must do everything we can to make sure our state remains an attractive place...

EAGLE PASS, Texas (Reuters) - A pilot program that jails all illegal immigrants crossing into this Texas border town from Mexico has led to a dramatic fall in numbers attempting the journey, the U.S. Office of Border Patrol said on Friday. A program known as Operation Streamline II, instituted on December 12, is aimed mostly at non-Mexican illegal immigrants who were arrested and released because Border Patrol agents did not have sufficient space to jail them. The blanket crackdown is also being applied to undocumented Mexicans who were previously subject to criminal background checks and released back over the Rio...

The recent spotlight on the impending execution of multiple-murderer Stanley “Tookie” Williams has once again highlighted the flaws in California’s death penalty law. Williams was put to death at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, after he was denied clemency by Governor Schwarzenegger. Williams was convicted in 1981 of murdering four people and sentenced to death. Yet 26 years after his victims took their final breaths, the killer still lives. His lawyers have continued to maneuver to thwart the sentence duly handed down by a jury of his peers until the very end. Williams’s case demonstrates just how dysfunctional the death penalty...

U.N. reform agenda watered-down General Assembly adopts wording stripped of details UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a watered-down draft document on poverty, human rights and reform for this week's summit of world leaders to consider, shedding many of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's ambitious goals after weeks of bitter debate. The compromise 35-page document is supposed to launch a major reform of the United Nations itself and galvanize efforts to ease global poverty. But to reach a consensus, most of the text's details were gutted in favor of abstract language. A definition of terrorism and details...

<p>The state has been on a spending spree for decades. Our last governor was recalled in large part because we felt something drastic had to be done to bring our fiscal house in order. Desperate for change, we went to Hollywood for our casting call and brought in the Terminator.</p>